Tips for Small to Medium Businesses: 5 Ways to Attract the Media and Potential Customers through Branding and PR

In just about all kinds of industries, fierce competition exists and every day, everywhere, consumers are blasted with hundreds of thousands of advertising campaigns and marketing messages from all sorts of businesses. Along with quality product and/or services, in today’s world, good image and publicity are everything.

Consumers typically choose brands that they trust in or are very familiar with, and to help them make the right decisions as to which products to buy, they often look to media journalists, bloggers, critics, and other product/service reviewers for information. However, for brands, earning positive media attention can be difficult.

PR professionals can help pitch their client company’s story to journalists, focusing on the journalist’s audience and these people’s needs so the story would be highly interesting. Since it is not at all easy to produce an idea for a press release that will resonate well with the media and your consumers, here are 5 ways to help attract media attention and gain new customers through branding and good PR:

1) Evaluate Your Company’s Core Values, Culture, And Mission/Vision.

To become a company that attracts the media as well as potential customers, you should develop a good image for your business. What are your business’ core values and why do you value them? What motivates your staff or employees? Why do they particularly like working with you?

Your company’s goals, efforts, and motivations will tell people a lot about what is important to you and your entire company. Do you value your consumers? You are not just building credibility in your industry but also trust among your consumers.

What problems are your employees currently facing? Are you doing something innovative in order to solve it? Both in and out of your industry, other companies are probably facing the same challenges as well, and the media particularly takes interest in covering any updates in these trends. For example, employee engagement is among the most important issues that continuously challenge businesses today. Thus, work with your company’s leaders as well as regular employees in developing unique ways to handle your employees’ needs, engaging everyone in your workplace.

Also track what your employees are positively doing outside your company. On a regular basis, try to connect with each of your workers and learn more about their interests and other specializations. You may not know it, but a potential industry leader or community superhero may be hiding under your wing and that is one great story to share publicly.

3) Innovate To Help Solve A Current, Urgent Consumer Need.

Be among the businesses that strive to make the world a better place and your brand will attract journalists.

Journalists are constantly searching for news or buzz of innovative solutions to problems that their readers are facing — or emerging issues that people aren’t yet aware they are facing. So is your company the next Uber, Amazon, or WordPress? Will your products and/or services help change people’s lives on a day-to-day basis? Make that story and then share it.

4) Participate In Causes and Give Back To the Community.

Your brand or company has probably already taken steps in making news about your recent philanthropic contribution or about your latest corporate social responsibility event. On the other hand, in doing this image-building initiative, ask yourself — are you doing this in such a way that people will really care about it? How does this affect people and how exactly are you able to inspire them? Start answering these questions by realizing why your business is giving back to a particular charity organization, and ideally too, create a relationship between your company’s mission/vision and the causes you are trying to support.

You may also focus your contributions on a particular person or persons and tell the story of the problems or challenges they’re facing.

5) Improve Your Company’s Damage Control Features During Failures.

Aside from companies with generally good images, people search for the “underdogs” — because consumers like realistically perfect (which makes them trustworthy) brands.

If your company has made a mistake, learn from it and then show how your company and your staff were able to triumph over that situation. This will deliver an inspiring message to the media. The lessons you learned can help others in the industry as well and even some of your consumers.

On the other hand, if there are negative news or exaggerated rumors about your company or its failures, PR specialists will play an important role during these times of crisis. A PR or public relations specialist will help you in effectively and quickly minimizing any damage to your company, thinking and acting fast under pressure on how to positively communicate with the media and the general public.

Conclusion

Using a PR specialist can efficiently help protect your image, boost branding for your business, and increase your reputation and sales.

Small- to medium-size companies or businesses that have budget constraints can benefit greatly from PR services by hiring a freelance PR specialist or a PR firm for a contractual job or limited-time only project.

Overall, establishing a good brand image via these tips will help you naturally attract the media’s attention, boost your reputation, and directly influence your consumers’ decisions, generating more sales for your business.